How Shall We Confess and Forgive?
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It is not good to make excuses for a sin based on it being part of your
job or role. Similarly, hiding from sins that are extremes of what you’ve done
in the past and it was okay, does not make them any less a sin. In fact, if a
“success script” you rely on leads to sin, it is worth reflecting on the entire
script; for example, “I just love too much” was maybe a dangerous thing for
David’s soul and relationships all along, but he didn’t realize it until it led
him to rape and murder.
It is not good to describe sin or forgiveness in solely disembodied
ways—it can make it hard to know that someone has broken a relationship or that
the mending of that relationship has occurred. In that line of thought, it is
not good to wallow in a sin after it has been forgiven, after a while it can come
off as bragging or picking at a scab.
It is good to take seriously the ways we’ve harmed other people, even
if the hurt was unintentional. It is good to be morally sensitive enough to
notice wrongs and try to make them right. Having the eyes of children—naïve
still and desirous to help victims—is an experience of the Kingdom of God.
It is good to offer concrete pathways for both victim and victimizer
(and a recognition that in the world as it is the lines between those two are
often fuzzier than we might like) to come to forgiveness. This should be done
with an eye to protecting and empowering the victim.
It is good to speak words of confession and forgiveness plainly—call a
thing what it is. This does not mean familiar, memorized, liturgies of
confession and forgiveness are bad, only that we ought to guard the space
between knowing something by heart and confessing the thing without
heart.
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